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The year 2013 was a good one for U.S. equity investors—and an even better one for Barrons.com readers.

Last year, our Website's bullish stock picks returned 20.4% through Dec. 31, easily outpacing their benchmarks' 14.3% gain. (Performance is measured from the day the article was published.) A third of our picks rose at least twice as high as their respective benchmarks.

Of course a rising tide lifts all boats, and our Weekday Traders and Stock Alerts were helped by the bull market. Yet our picks still bested the broader market's stellar returns.

We didn't make many bearish calls last year, which served us well, as 2013 was the best year for stocks in more than a decade. Nonetheless, all three of our bearish picks, pegged to the Standard & Poor's 500, did indeed badly trail that index: The group rose just 2%, compared to a 17.5% rise for the S&P 500 over the same period. Even with dividend payouts, our bearish picks grew just over 3%.

To determine a stock's return, we compared the share price at the close on the day the article was published through the close on Dec. 31, 2013. As is the practice at Barron's magazine, Barrons.com compared each performance to one of three benchmarks over the same period—the Standard & Poor's 500 index for all large-cap and international names, the S&P MidCap 400 for all midsize offerings and the Russell 2000 for small-cap stocks.

A list of all our picks and pans is available at Barron's 2013 Stock Picks. Please note that the table continuously updates, so the numbers will differ slightly from those in this article, which measured our performance as of the end of last year.

Though we analyze companies for our readers, Barrons.com is not an investment advisor and doesn't push stocks. Rather the Website is a place to find well-researched insight into stocks that are worth buying, or not.

Nonetheless, Barrons.com was able to pick winners and beat its benchmarks overall in 2013. While no investor can hope to be right all the time, we hope that diligent research and fresh ideas will help us outperform in 2014 as well.